1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a walking aid technology, more particularly to an electric walking aid operated based on a distance from the user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Walking disorder is one of common clinical dysfunctions. After onset of injury of spinal cord, cerebral vascular accident, brain trauma or CNS disorder, varying degrees of sequela may be left to impact the patient's walk ability, for example, the sequela including paraplegia, hemiplegia, lower limb bone joint and muscle disease, joint dysfunction, decreased muscle strength, destruction of joint stability, or imbalance between strength of muscles. Impaired walking ability, which includes unable to walk, walking difficulty or abnormal gait, directly affects the patient's activities in daily life. The most urgent need of such patients is to improve the walking ability and provide appropriate support is the first step.
Electric walking aid is a training apparatus help patients improve walking ability. However, present electric walking aids only focus on the way to make patients walk and follow the aids, but fail to provide appropriate support for individual case of patient. This comes up with patients moving slower than the aids, and the unsafe condition happens due to the excessive spacing between patients and aids. On the other hand, cases that patients move faster than the aids, which leads to inadequate spacing between the patient and the aids, may also occur. The former situation with excessive spacing makes patients lean forward improperly, and the patients are prone to fall forward. The latter situation with inadequate spacing makes patients produce a deficient stride for normal steps. Some of the patients who thrown back may even fall backwards.
Therefore, it is pretty important to make electric walking aid available to adjust the distance between the aids and the patients according to the users individually and provide appropriate support. What is an appropriate support is to provide support when the patient has a need, but not support the user all the time. An appropriate support can let the users control their walking process and training on their own. When there are improper changes to the patients' walking pattern or position, the aids will provide support to the users, and further adjust the users' walking pattern and position. An appropriate support on one hand, improves the patients' safety while using the aids. On the other hand, appropriate support can help the patients adjust their position and provide appropriate walking spacing for the patients to walk. However, current electric walking aids don't have such functions.